Teaching Writing

Today I began to teach my high school English students how to write dialogue. It is funny that many believe they know how to do it correctly, but as it turns out there are a lot of tricks when it comes to the punctuation in dialogue. Where does the comma go in relation to the quotation mark? How about a quotation ending in a question, but you still have to put the attribution at the end of the sentence?

I have not even gone into the different ways you can say someone said something, and how often anyway should you say “he said” or “she said?”

Teaching the process of writing again brought out a renewed interest in doing it myself. It has been about a year and two months since I last published a book, so I am overdue for a new one. I must say though that what I am working on now is a duesy. Currently it’s standing at 81,633 words. Before this, my longest book stood at just over 60,000, so to me it’s a lot.

[Trivia alert: Did you know the word duesy originated from the car manufacturer Duesenberg, which created an American built limousine. So a duesy was an American built limo, considered to be among the best cars built. Therefore a duesy is a big deal]

I have also experimented with third person limited person in which different chapters or sections are from the perspective of one character. This was a fun challenge for me, but certainly added to the difficulty of the book.

Well, it’s time to get back to my writing. Thanks for reading.

-Aaron

About Aaron K. Redshaw

Aaron's goal for writing is to create believable characters in fantasy or science fiction worlds that do not leave out the element of faith in a personal and loving God. He is an English teacher at a large public high school, the senior co-pastor of New Hope Church in Scotts Valley, CA (newhopesv.org), and a father and husband in a wonderful family which he hopes to someday patent.